Category Archives: Columns

Published pieces I’ve written, primarily in The Recorder, Greenfield, Mass.

Dec
30
2020

A Fateful Fuller Swamp Hunt

by Gary Sanderson

Fuller Swamp isn’t a welcoming type of place that invites you in for coffee by the kitchen fireplace. No, not quite. The call from Fuller is more like a challenge or foreboding taunt. Something like, “Come on in if you dare and give it your best shot.” No promise of success, never an apology to […]

posted in Columns, Local history, The Dogs | No Comments

Dec
13
2020

Some Pheasants Win

by Gary Sanderson

The deck is stacked against our ring-necked pheasants these days, when hunting for them has, unfortunately, become strictly a put and take game. The beautiful, pen-raised gamebirds arrive at selected coverts open to hunting – mostly state-owned Wildlife-Management Areas – crated four to a box in racks on the back of stocking trucks driven by […]

posted in Columns, The Dogs | No Comments

Nov
17
2020

Whately Squire Goes To Happy Hunting Ground

by Gary Sanderson

There’s a glaring void in Whately’s North Street/Whately Glen neighborhood. His name is Lyndon “Sonny” Scott, a humble Whately dairy farmer and proud descendant of the town’s founding families. He died at 88 a couple of months ago, removing yet another valuable historical source who knew the land surrounding his expansive farm like no other. […]

posted in Columns, Genealogy, Local history | No Comments

Nov
04
2020

A Deer Story That Can Now Be Told

by Gary Sanderson

This is a tale that took place decades ago. I’ve told it many times in conversation but never written it. Now, with camouflaged bowhunters occupying local tree stands, why not, for posterity, put it in black and white? I’d estimate that it unfolded in the mid to late 1980s, when I was a young man […]

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Oct
22
2020

Deerfield’s North Meadows Elm Passes

by Gary Sanderson

A proud, dignified Old Deerfield elder, tall and broad, taciturn to a fault, died peacefully with little notice in recent months, ironically during the planting and nesting season of birth and growth. Though few knew his name, it was Ulmus Americana, more commonly American Elm – a dying breed that once lined our streets and neighborhoods […]

posted in Columns, Indians, Local history | No Comments

Sep
28
2020

Kids’ Stuff

by Gary Sanderson

Never too late to share a good story, this one occurred on a hot, humid July morning, before noon. Long ago, yes, but still relevant. It had been a typical morning. I had walked a couple of miles at daybreak, eaten a light breakfast, read, caught up on TV news, gone through emails, responding to […]

posted in Columns, Indians | No Comments

Sep
11
2020

Great Beaver Tale Evolves

by Gary Sanderson

The ancient, indigenous Great Beaver Tale about the origin of Deerfield’s Pocumtuck Range has changed dramatically since 1890, when East Charlemont antiquarian Phinehas Field’s 105-word, 1871 description was published in Volume 1 of History and Proceedings of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association (1870-79). Soon after that bare-bones account by a white Christian man of deep Puritan […]

posted in Columns, Indians, Local history, South Deerfield | Comments (2)

Aug
10
2020

Sugarloaf Beaver Tale All Began In 1871 With Phinehas Field And The PVMA

by Gary Sanderson

A venerable, solemn Phinehas Field is displayed in the formal, sketched portrait accompanying his online Find A Grave profile. A man who volunteered for Civil War service after his 60th birthday, Field had, by the time of this formal portrait, served many years as deacon of the Charlemont Congregational Church and lived a distinguished, pious life. Phinehas […]

posted in Columns, Genealogy, Indians, Local history, South Deerfield | Comments (2)

Jul
18
2020

Mishebeshu In Montague?

by Gary Sanderson

An underwater panther in Montague? Well, bear with me. An adventure, indeed. Credit Acton kayaker Al Peirce with the interesting May 20 discovery, made while killing time awaiting takeout following his maiden Deerfield River paddle. Launching from Montague, across from the Deerfield’s dangerous Connecticut River confluence located between the General Pierce and bicycle-path bridges, Peirce had maneuvered […]

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Jun
11
2020

Where Was Canterbury of Early Hatfield/Whately?

by Gary Sanderson

Canterbury came into existence as a place between places in early Hatfield-Deerfield lore, a perilous no-man’s land where only the brave dared linger, even then on high alert. Thus the confusion about the specifics of this place, named in the early days of Hatfield, that ultimately became the northeast corner of Whately. No one is […]

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